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tion, and by the vital powers of ihcir organs, imbibe a portion of 

 some of its constituents. 



When we behold a luxuriant iiarvest, gathered from fields in 

 which the original soil is of a kind least of all congenial to vege- 

 tation ; when we find that all this feriility, contrasting so strikingly 

 with the barrenness around if, proceeds from a few granules of 

 a substance sparsely distributed through the enormous and coun- 

 teracting excess of sea-beach sand, more arid than the soil to 

 which it is applied, are we not led to look with admiration on the 

 potent properties of this curiously constituted mineral ? The deve- 

 lopements of geology are full of instances like this, showing in 

 how many unlooked-for ways, the mineral world may be made 

 subservient to the good of mankind. 



This striking proof of the fertilizing power of the marl ought 

 to encourage those districts not directly within the tract, where 

 some of the strata possess the green granules in a sensible pro- 

 portion. It expands most materially the limits of the territory 

 where marling may be attempted, and points us to many beds as 

 fertilizing, which otherwise would be deemed wholly inefficacious. 



There can be no doubt that the agriculture of our seaboard 

 Slates is destined to derive essential benefit from the remarkably 

 wide distribution of this green granular mineral under various 

 geological relationships, besides those in which it presents itself 

 in New Jersey. 



Thus the tertiary shell marls of Delaware, Maryland, and Vir- 

 ginia, and I might add of other States still farther south, contain 

 not unfrequently as high a per ceritage of the greensand, as does 

 the sea-beach sand upon the coast of Monmouth county in New 

 Jersey; and I may mention that my brother. Professor William 

 B. Rogers, of the University of Virginia, charged with the geolo- 

 gical survey of that State, has already done important service to 

 the agriculture of some districts, by discovering, and calling at- 

 tention to the existence of the greensand in the tertiary strata of 

 Virginia. 



Between Long Branch and Deal, the marl stratum has been 

 penetrated thirty feet. The upper two feet consist of a green 

 clay, seemingly derived from the disintegration of the green 

 grains, intermixed with a large proportion of yellowish white 

 clay. The main marl bed having a thickness of about twenty- 

 six feet, contains several subordinate layers, but all contain a 



